Ardent
by GideonGraystairs
Summary: Magnus and Alec are soulmates- a word that carries with it a meaning they have spent their whole lives learning and still have yet to fully grasp. A hardly chance encounter at a party shifts it all into motion and suddenly the two find themselves facing everything the names across their wrists really mean and the fact that, sometimes, fate can have a cruel sense of humour.


**Hey, guys! New story I wrote probably about a year ago but only just got around to (sort of) editing, hence why it may not be up to my usual writing standard as of late (or maybe it is). It's an idea I've had in my head for a while now and I really wanted to explore it, thus this was born. Fun fact: I actually found that quote there _after_ I gave the story its title. Sort of perfect, sort of cool. Also FF didn't feel like taking into account all of my italics so I redid them in the last fifteen minutes and am therefore not sure that I caught them all.  
**

 **P.S. I decided to post this today of all days in celebration of Malec week (August 1st to 7th). I missed it because I wrapped up in writing Troyler, oops.**

 **Hope you enjoy!**

* * *

"Falling in love is very real, but I used to shake my head when people talked about soul mates, poor deluded individuals grasping at some supernatural ideal not intended for mortals but sounded pretty in a poetry book. Then, we met, and everything changed, the cynic has become the converted, the sceptic, an ardent zealot." — E.A Bucchianeri, _Brushstrokes of a Gadfly_

* * *

Their first meeting is awkward and strained, Alec's voice catching in his aching throat and Magnus struggling to fill the silence the other has left him. Neither smile, neither laugh, and neither have any idea what to do in the face of what they are.

At first, it's easy to ignore the discomfort between them; the loud music of the party drowning out their uncertainty with thumping beats and heavy techno, the bodies grinding together all around them masking their frozen shock, the swooping lights of a thousand different colours not bright enough to reveal the conflicted expressions on both their faces. But the fact that neither of them were ready for this still shows all too well.

Surprisingly, Alec is the first to react. He swallows roughly, feeling a dead weight pulling at his chest, and finally turns his wild eyes to Magnus's. He pulls at his sleeves and wishes he could hide from this, could turn right back around and slink through the open doors he can still see just in the corner of his vision, pretend this never happened and go back to the quiet life he'd led until now. Go back to safe, to steady, to unhappy but familiar and routine in the greatest sense of the word.

He can't, though. He knows that. It's why he's the first to speak.

"Hey," he says and the word sticks dryly around the lump in his throat, has his already wild heart beating an even more frantic pace. Magnus isn't faring much better, his own vitality aching and pounding and freezing all at once.

"Hey," he says back, even though the word feels wrong and inadequate in the face of _this_. He doesn't know what else to say here, what he's supposed to do, so he'll take the lead Alec has given him and follow it anxiously, wondering where they're going from here.

Alec doesn't know any more than he does, though, and his brief moment of _do something, say something, anything, don't let it happen like this_ is gone. So instead of trying to bridge the mile long gap that has stretched its way between them, he twists his shaking hands into the worn out pockets of his jeans and scans the fluctuating crowd for his siblings, for their friends, for someone he can cling to like a lifeline in the aftermath of being thrown into the middle of a raging ocean without ever being taught how to swim.

The warlock must notice that he isn't going to do anything more, that Alec's just as lost in this as he is, because he digs his nails sharply into the palms of his hands and gathers his courage, his words, before facing the great beast tearing into the both of them. His voice is strained and coarse as he asks, "Did you come here alone?"

It feels small and pointless, a tiny question with no meaning in the face of everything they are, they will be, and Alec would laugh if he weren't so grateful for it. "No," he replies, still scanning the crowd because if he looks now, if he lets himself go like that, he's worried about what will happen. "There's more of us." He doesn't need to clarify that the ' _us_ ' is the nephilim, his runes standing out starkly against the pallor of his skin. He also doesn't mention that his group is more than just shadowhunters now, doesn't bring up Maia or Simon or Jordan or his sister's latest faerie boyfriend. He doesn't mention Clary, either, who's not really one of them, not yet, but can always be found clinging to Jace like a second skin. He doesn't say anything more because it all feels like too much.

"Right," is all the brighter man says before thinking better of it and trying in a stilted way to regain some form of control here. "You lot always did love to travel in packs." His tone is forcibly lighthearted, panicked and heavy and rough underneath it all where Alec refuses to look. The younger boy's smile is just as strained as Magnus's voice, a tight lilting of his pinched lips with only the briefest flicker of his bright blue eyes over to the warlock's slitted pupils, their golden-green irises glowing brightly in the muffled darkness of his loft.

Magnus wants to break the awkwardness permeating the air between them, to finish the bridge they keep burning down with every strangled attempt at crossing it, but four hundred years is a long time to wait and he's too overcome with the enormity of the moment, with the feeling of _this is it, this is the one_ to remember any of the tools he'd learned for building bridges across rocky water.

Alec opens his mouth again, letting his glimmering blue eyes settle on Magnus completely in an effort to make this better, easier, for them. The words are halfway out of his mouth, too, when they're interrupted by a group of loud party-goers smashing into the ice between them, a dark-haired girl curling runed arms around Alec's shoulders as the blond of the group looks on with a grin aimed towards them. Magnus can't help but feel jealous, feel thrown, by how easily they draw Alec into them, wrapping around him and pulling him into their circle without a thought. He wishes he could do that, wishes their conversation hadn't been so stilted, their movements so strained, their meeting so difficult. He wishes and wishes and he knows it'll never be granted because it's far too late for that, Alec already being drawn towards the door, his friends chatting loudly about nothing of any importance and suddenly Magnus feels like this is it, this is all he gets, and panic tears it's way through him.

He's already reaching for him, having pushed through the crowd that had swarmed it's way between them, by the time he manages to pull himself out of the anxiety attack he's just had in the confines of his mind. He's already grabbed hold of his arm, pulled him back against him, wrapped him in a desperate embrace by the time he realizes what he's doing and by then it's far too late to draw away. It's okay, though, because now that he's got him in his arms, Magnus isn't sure he'll ever be able to let him go.

"I've waited a long time," he breathes into Alec's ear, the air falling from his mouth stirring the dark hair at the base of the boy's neck. He can feel his shadowhunter wrap his arms around his lower back in return, burying his face in Magnus's soft blue dress shirt.

"So have I," he breathes back, though both know it's been nowhere near as long for him as it has for Magnus. There is desperation in their grips, an urgency in the way they cling to each other, like they're both terrified to let go and never catch hold of the other again. Magnus can see over Alec's shoulder that the group he'd come here with is looking on in interest, confusion clouding their dazed expressions. They're drunk, he knows that, and maybe that's why it's so easy for them to shrug and turn away, to leave the two boys be and move on without them. It almost hurts that they'd abandon one of their own so easily, but Magnus doesn't have the strength to focus on it for long.

"I'm not letting you go," he says quietly after another minute has passed, burying his tear-stained face into a head of dark hair. Alec is crying now too, soft sobs that make his body tremble but not jump, makes his hands fist into Magnus's shirt but not claw. He doesn't need to say that he knows that, the response is implied in the way he shifts against the warlock, pressing infinitely closer but never close enough.

 _It's okay_ , Alec thinks to himself. _I'm not letting you go, either._

* * *

Alec doesn't blow out candles on his fifteenth birthday. He doesn't go out hunting demons he'll never kill, at least not until he's eighteen and everything has started to change, or play games with his siblings and eagerly try out the new bow he's bound to get from one of the three of them. He doesn't do anything other than sit in his room and wait, wringing clammy hands and taking shaky breaths as he tries not to panic. Fifteen is big, bigger than any other birthday he'll ever have.

The enormity of it culminates into one single moment, just after the clock has struck 10:58 PM, the exact moment he was born. The spot just above his hipbone lights on fire, scorching through to the very depths of his being as he writhes on his bed, clasping his hands over it to make it stop. His vision goes black, sound disappears, and suddenly he can feel nothing but the burning on his skin as words are engraved across it in a looping black scrawl.

At first, after everything stops, Alec doesn't move a muscle. He lays on his bed, his hands still clasping at his now aching hip, and stares unseeingly up at the dull white of his bedroom ceiling. There's a brief, delirious moment where he wonders why it isn't a golden green, but the thought is quickly dismissed for its absurdity.

Then, suddenly, curiosity claws its way into his exhausted mind and he dazedly reaches down to lift his shirt up at an aching pace. His hands shake as he does, his throat closing up as he twists his body to stare down at the two words now inked permanently into the skin just above his right hipbone.

 _Magnus Bane._

His soulmate.

This is when Alec starts to panic.

* * *

When Magnus was fifteen, the name did not come. He remembers waiting, curled quietly into the corner of his shared room at the covenant, for his soulmate to give him this one vital piece of information everyone else would be gifted at this age. He remembers the crushing disappointment as the clock chimed midnight, the utter hopelessness as the day stretched into two and then into a week, until a month had passed and he'd given up on the name. He remembers, of course he does, but he's never had any reason to think about it until now.

He's in his living room when it happens, sinking onto the couch beside Chairman Meow with a steaming cup of hot chocolate in his hand and a spanish movie playing out quietly on the screen across the room. His hand starts to shake when he goes to set the mug down on the coffee table in front of him and it's not long before the rest of him is trembling too. He's not cold, but he doesn't feel hot yet either. There's a twisting wrench in his gut, though, and he curls in on himself to try to fend it off.

And then, all of a sudden, there's a huge lurch in his heart, the kind that makes him question whether it's still even remotely in the right place, and he's _on fire_. His whole body burns and burns and burns and a tearing sensation claws at the left side of his chest, just a few inches below his collarbone. Writhing in an effort to escape it, Magnus ends up on the floor beside the couch, clutching at his chest as his vision goes white and then black and then a brilliant blue more vibrant than anything he's ever seen before. The sound of Chairman meowing at him is gone now too, replaced by muffled but urgent whispers of voices he can't make out. The earth tilts beneath him, his body flipping sideways, and then suddenly everything stops with one last great lurch of his flaming heart.

There's a long moment afterwards where he can't even consider moving, every muscle in his body screaming in agonizing pain, and he feels a crushing sense of terror because _what just happened?_ The fear is gone as fast as it comes, though, when he finally manages to shift an arm up enough to pull down the collar of his shirt and get a look at the skin underneath. Suddenly, he can't find a single thing to be anything but giddy about because it's there, just under his collarbone. A name.

 _Alexander Lightwood._

It's beautiful, rolling perfectly off of his tongue when he says it out loud, and the rough sketch of an angel's wing above it only makes it seem more flawless, more lovely and wonderful and it's more than everything Magnus never knew he wanted. He knows what the wing means, that his soulmate is a nephilim, and he thinks that it's fitting that his other half, his perfect match, be a descendant of the angels where he was fathered by a demon. It's times like these where Magnus is really thankful he was born a Downworlder, for they're the only brand of being to be given a symbol with the name, to know before they meet their other half exactly what species they would find.

He lets out a heavy breath, his head falling back onto the hardwood floor with a thud, and moves to run his fingers through the gray fur of the cat that's just landed on his chest. He smiles, absently rubbing at his heart with the other hand.

He has a soulmate now, after so many years of waiting. And while it will be nineteen more before he meets him, just knowing that he's out there is enough for now.

* * *

Their first date is much more simple, more comfortable. There are silences that permeate the air between them but they're neither awkward, nor desperate to be filled by words neither can find. There are pauses and hesitations, but they are easily made unimportant by light laughs and longing looks, careful touches and quiet affirmations that this is real, this is right. They've found each other, after such a long period of waiting.

They don't go out for it, both preferring to remain solely in the company of each other and not have to share this perfection, this greatness, with the rest of the world. So instead of lunch at some restaurant or other, instead of walks in the park or seeing movies played out on wide screens, they drift into Magnus's loft with the ease of coming home and find rhythm in such mundane tasks as making coffee and flipping pancakes. It's simple and easy and perfect and, really, neither of them could ever have wished for anything more.

Magnus finds himself slipping further into this when he hears Alec laugh for the first time, a breathy sound as light as the air that carries it to him, and Alec finds himself falling a little bit in love with the way the warlock will smile at him, a bright expression that looks infinitely happier than anything Alec has ever seen before in all his life. The blue-eyed boy sips his coffee in silence for a while, leaning against the kitchen counter as he watches Magnus flit about making them breakfast. The glittered boy sneaks less than secret glances at his date, still in his striped grey pajama pants and tight white tanktop, the clothes he'd slept in. It's nice, doing this in the morning. It feels even more like there is something starting here between them, like this is the beginning of the best part of their lives.

"You don't have to do that," Magnus says when he notices Alec getting the plates out for them, setting them on the side of the kitchen counter with the chairs tucked into it. The shadowhunter only smiles sweetly, running a gentle hand over Magnus's arm before sliding into one of the seats. It makes the tanned man smile even wider, feeling undeniably giddy about something so little as an unconscious gesture such as that.

Eventually, breakfast is done cooking and they're seated side by side, munching away at velvety pancakes and crispy bacon while sipping softly at heated drinks. Alec feels something clicking into place here, feels like all along he'd just been kidding himself and that this, this is home, not the institute he's grown up in or the room that's always felt too bare. Here, with Magnus, is right where he belongs.

Magnus would be lying if he didn't say the same.

* * *

Jace is the first to see. They're training half-heartedly, wrestling each other roughly to the ground of the training room, when he manages to pin Alec down and notices immediately the loopy script just over his hipbone, where the black t-shirt he's wearing has ridden up. At first, all he does is stare.

"That's a guy's name, isn't it?" he asks eventually, still staring defiantly at the scrawl of black on his _parabatai_ 's skin, rather than into the imploring blue eyes trying desperately to meet his. Alec feels a lump form in his throat; this is what he's always been most afraid of. His parents' reactions were actually more at the top of the list than Jace's, but this still turns out to be a petrifying moment of utter terror for Alec.

"Yeah," he manages to croak out after a long moment of trying to swallow down the lump sitting heavily in the middle of his throat. He's barely sixteen, just over a year having passed since the name made it's appearance on his skin, but he suddenly feels like he's twelve again, wanting with everything in him to deny what he knows deep down is true.

"Have you—" Jace hesitates, fumbling over his words in a way he never has before. "Was it surprising?"

He knows what he's asking; whether he knew before the mark burned into his skin that he swung the other way. He doesn't want to answer, because he did and he knows that will hurt Jace even more because a year of keeping it a secret wouldn't be so bad, but more than that? His brother has always been so conscious of these things too, of being left out or not trusted as much as other members of the family he hadn't been born into. It makes Alec feel guilty for keeping it from him, from his best friend, his brother, his _parabatai_ , but fear and doubt have always been his greatest weakness and he knows that if he could do it over again, he'd do the exact same thing.

"No." It comes out as a whisper, a hushed breath he hadn't wanted to exhale and for a moment nothing happens. Then Jace lets go of where he's holding Alec's wrists pinned above his head and moves off of him, standing a few feet away from his brother as he swallows thickly and rubs his hands against his pants in a nervous gesture. Alec props himself onto his elbows, but makes no move to stand.

"Did Isabelle know?"

"Not about the name, no." And even if it's not exactly what his brother wanted to hear, it's clearly still somewhat of a consolation to Jace, who exhales a loud breath and appears visibly relieved, shoulders sagging and hand rubbing tiredly at his face.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

Alec hesitates. "I was scared."

Jace doesn't say anything after that, a fact for which Alec is grateful. It's part of why they work, the way Jace always knows when not to push, when to leave things be, and Alec always knows when not to say too much, when to just let it rest after the simple statements. They're okay, in the end, and Alec is so immensely relieved that it's out there now, that he's not alone in this soulmates thing, that he races off to tell his sister about it the first chance he gets.

Later, Jace will show him the messy script scrawled haphazardly down his neck with a pained expression and Alec will understand the fear he'd seen in Jace's eyes as he'd recoiled from his brother. He will smile tightly at him and draw him into a one armed hug that speaks of not knowing how to console a boy who's never needed it before. He will ruffle his hair and crack an awful joke, leading Jace to one-up him as he always does whenever Alec fails in the humour department (which is admittedly quite often). He will change the subject and reanimate his brother with a thousand distractions that will never draw the pain away from his despairing golden eyes.

He will know, then, that soulmates are not always something as perfect as he's spent his life believing.

* * *

Eighty years before he'll meet the other half of him, Magnus learns that soulmates are truly something magic, something precious. He'll resent it, sure, for still not having earned so much as the name of his pre-destined, but he'll also realize that when it does happen for him, which he still hopes it will, it'll be worth all the years he's waited.

He's out on the streets of Barcelona when it first happens, his green-skinned friend suddenly stopping mid-sentence, black eyes going wide before he keels over with a groan, clutching at his wrist in a desperate frenzy. Magnus isn't sure at first, staring panicked at his companion as he debates whether or not to try helping him with his magic. He's younger now, hasn't yet lost any of the few people he's known nearly his whole life. He knows less pain, less love, and is far more irresponsible than he will be when he meets the boy with the vibrant blue eyes that sometimes haunt dreams he doesn't understand.

"Ragnor?" he asks cautiously once his partner has finally let go of his arm and stood up straight. He's staring down at his wrist now with a perplexed expression on his face, tilting it back and forth despite the fact that he's standing under a bright streetlamp and could see from any angle.

"Mags, you've got to see this," he informs him after a second, beckoning the other man forward to catch a look at whatever's captured his attention so entirely. Magnus steps forward hesitantly, reaching out to grasp his friend's arm and draw it towards him. When he does, he stares in wonder at his friend's wrist.

There, in a delicate hand full of precision and care— a name.

They both stand there in the middle of the rough street resting at the center of Barcelona in utter amazement; Ragnor, wondering how long it will be before he meets the boy attached to the name and Magnus, wondering when that inky black will find it's way to his skin in the shape of different words, words meant just for him.

They say nothing of the faded sun that lay above the name, the symbol for the Night Children, or the fact that this must mean they've only just been born and probably don't even know they'll one day be a vampire. Magnus doesn't ask what it felt like, getting the name, and Ragnor doesn't tell him, nor do either mention Magnus's lack of one. This moment is too precious to be let go of.

Later, when Magnus will watch the only soulmates he's ever been so close to meet for the first time from the couch in his loft— glancing over at where Ragnor has just walked in the door only to run headfirst into the boy who's been staying there with him for a week now —he'll feel a pang of longing beat at his thundering heart. He will watch the easy, almost frantic way they speak and wonder how it'll be when he meets his own soulmate. He'll watch, in the years that will follow, how effortlessly they work, how perfectly they fit, and he will feel hope for the first time in three hundred years that it'll be okay, that he'll find his own soulmate someday.

He will know that it'll be worth the wait, that it will be perfect. He'll never have to doubt that again, so long as he always has Ragnor and Raphael to find hope in.

* * *

Their first kiss happens that same day, just as Alec's about to head out the door. He's upset at the idea of leaving, but the constant buzzing in his back pocket is a clear indication that he has to get back. It doesn't keep him from lingering, taking as long as possible to pull on his shoes, his coat, to even make his way to the door. Magnus doesn't mind.

It's right as he's opened the door to step outside that it happens, that he turns back and gives the glittery warlock a calculating look before moving forward and yanking Magnus's head down to crash their lips together. Their isn't an explosion of passion that comes with it, but it isn't a soft, chaste kiss either. It sits somewhere in the middle, a linger of feeling tingling at their lips as they move them together slowly, easily, perfectly. There's a rhythm here, they both feel it, and it's not hard to find within the first half second of kissing.

Eventually, the buzzing in Alec's pocket grows in volume, though, and he has to pull back. He gives Magnus a saddened look, feeling like all he really wants to do is stay here with the man he's sure he's going to be spending the rest of his life with, and pecks him one last time before turning to go. Magnus stares after him, at the closed door of his loft, and smiles brightly to himself. He's never felt this happy before― he's sure of it.

Alec, on the other hand, will slip quietly into the place he'd mistakenly called home before and only have to take one look at his _parabatai_ for the feeling of excitement, joy, belonging, perfect, to disappear. His brother has started looking worse with every passing day, since Clary and Simon and the chaos they brought with them crashed into their lives not so long ago. His smile is gone now, the aftereffects of seeing Magnus for the first time since the party two nights ago fading away at the bags under his best friend's eyes, the haunted look Jace now wears almost permanently.

Giving him a pained smile, Alec claps him awkwardly on the shoulder before moving to dispose of his coat somewhere his room. Once within the safety of his familiar four walls and closed door, Alec lets out a quiet breath and pulls out his phone. Magnus has texted him, light words that nearly bring the smile back to his face, but they're not enough. He calls him, instead.

When Magnus picks up, he almost believes soulmates really are perfect.

* * *

Alec doesn't dislike Clary the first time he meets her. In fact, he'd go so far as to say he even likes her. He doesn't like that she's going to get her heart broken with the way she looks at Jace, that Jace is going to fall even more to pieces with the way he looks at her. He wants to tell his brother not to go down this road, that it'll only make everything so much worse, but he knows Jace will never listen to him, too desperate to find any way possible to get out of this trap the name on his neck has left him in. So instead of telling Jace, he tells Clary.

He doesn't mention Jace's soulmate, doesn't ask her about the name he knows is on her ankle. He says nothing about how scared he is that this will destroy what little of his _parabatai_ has been left intact over the past year or the name he knows is behind his sister's ear. He doesn't give a reason, really, just tells her she'll get her heart broken, that it won't end well. He hopes it's enough to dissuade her.

He finds out too late that it's not, when she and Jace come strolling into the living room holding hands. Isabelle doesn't so much as glance up from her demonology textbook and Jace refuses to meet his eyes. He wonders when words became so few between them.

It's not until Clary's friend, Simon, shows up on their doorstep a newly turned vampire that he realizes she wasn't what was going to destroy his brother. He watches the strained way Jace looks at him or how often he tries not to look at him at all, watches the tense way Clary will glance between them, eyes soft and knowing but equally pained. He watches Simon, too, and the resigned way he glances at the not so happy couple, the self-deprecating turn of his eyes onto the stretch of his own body. He doesn't need to say that he'd thought something like this would happen, that he'd probably spent his whole life thinking his soulmate wouldn't want him if they met. Isabelle looks at none of them.

It makes Alec want to cry, to scream and throw things and burn the name over his hip off of his skin and screw this whole soulmates business because if the people closest to him have it this bad, surely he won't have it any better? Alec almost hopes he doesn't, knowing the guilt would eat him alive if he did. Why should he be happy, why should he have a perfect soulmate, when everything with them has gone to hell?

It's not until Maia and Jordan come along that Alec starts to feel more hopeful towards this Magnus Bane who's left his mark across his soul. Because they're not perfect; they've messed up and hurt each other and fallen just a little bit apart along the way. But they're together, they're soulmates, and somehow it's reassuring to him to see that it might not be as perfect as the picture his childhood education has painted of this step in life.

They bring new meaning to the word _soulmates_ and suddenly Alec finds it's less scary.

* * *

The first soulmates Magnus ever becomes acquainted with are complicated. They are not two people, each with the other's name scrawled across their skin in whatever handwriting they will have when they are exactly twenty-one. They are three, each with two names curving into a perfect infinity sign over their hearts.

He wonders how that works, how you can have two other halves and not just one. He wonders how they can split their attention so equally, perfectly, between each other. He wonders how three so different people― Tessa with her books and stubbornness, Jem with his calm and music, Will with his fighting and animosity― can work in such flawless harmony. He never questions their love, though, because it is obvious and equal, balanced and strong in the way it wraps around the three of them.

He'll glance down at his own chest and wonder just what kind of soulmate he'll have, if he ever does get one.

* * *

Alec introduces Magnus to his siblings and the wayward group of friends they've managed to form a month after they start dating. He's nervous at first, leading Magnus up into the depths of the institute and wishing the people he knows could just be normal for once. His hands are clammy and hot as they grip at his soulmate's, his legs feeling weak and shaky as he makes his way to the living room he's sure everyone will be gathered in.

He's not wrong; they're all there, laughing and glaring and talking and sticking their tongues out at each other like the children they still are. It makes something in Alec clench painful and he stops in the doorway, Magnus hovering over his shoulder as he watches Alec's blue eyes with a perplexed expression on his face. They look _so happy_ , his siblings and the ones with their names on their skin, and he wonders why this can't be what it's always like. He wonders why this has to be so forced.

Isabelle is the first to notice them standing there, her brows drawing into a frown as she takes note of the warlock behind her brother, clutching at his hand. She shoulders Jace, who's sitting beside her arguing with Simon over who would win in a fight, and shoots Alec a sharp looks that demands explanations he's not sure he's ready to give.

Because them meeting Magnus is one thing, but them knowing that this is really it for him, that this is his soulmate, his other half, the only love he will ever have from here on out, that's an entirely different thing that Alec can't be certain he's ready to face.

Magnus, sensing his apprehension, gives his hand a hard squeeze as he surveys the group gathered in the living room. Half of them are sprawled over the couches, the other half strewn about on the floor, and all of them are engaged in loud, expressive conversations that rise and fall like the changing tide. It's different for him, a man who's never had a group of friends larger than three in one place. It's new and exciting and he can't help but feel incredibly happy that he's found this with Alec, that he's found _Alec_ at all.

"Who's this?" Isabelle asks eventually, her tone sharp enough to cut away any conversation still taking place throughout the room. The others turn curious eyes on the two boys in the doorway, lingering openly on the taller of them, and Alec feels the sudden urge to slink away and never return.

He clears his throat, clutches his soulmate's hand like a lifeline, and raises his eyes to meet hers. "Magnus," he says, gesturing vaguely to the man beside him with the hand that isn't clinging to the warlock's so tightly he's sure he must be cutting off circulation. Magnus gives a little half-wave, gripping Alec back with just as much force.

Isabelle's eyes zone in on their entwined hands, her expression unreadable and hard as she turns it back to her brother's face. "Who is he?"

 _My soulmate_ , Alec wants to say. _The one_ , he wishes he could tell her. _Everything_ , he longs to reveal. "My boyfriend," are the words that actually come out, sounding inadequate and indeterminably wrong to his ears. Magnus is so much more than his boyfriend, so much more than just the guy he's dating.

His sister looks like she's going to say something else, ask another sharp question that sends Alec teetering further towards the brink of breaking down, but she gets cut off by Jace pushing himself to his feet and stepping loudly across the hardwood floor to extend a hand to Magnus. "Jace," he introduces with a cocky smirk that manages not to look anywhere near as forced as it is. "Alec's _parabatai._ "

It gives Magnus pause, he hadn't known Alec had a _parabatai,_ and he glances over at his soulmate briefly for some kind of help, some kind of indication on how he's supposed to act. Alec doesn't look anything but immensely grateful to his brother, though, so he reaches forward to shake Jace's hand and offer a teasing comment that sends them into a competitive bout.

Relieved, Alec leaves his soulmate to battle it out and moves to sink onto the couch beside his sister. She's still watching him with an unreadable expression that sets him on edge and every time her eyes flit to Magnus the frown on her face gets even deeper. Simon and Clary are engaged in an expressive conversation with the two werewolves across the room, barely even batting an eye at the sudden turn of events.

Eventually, the younger Lightwood leans forward to pin him with a sharp stare. "Let me see it," she demands, her voice hard with just the barest linger of concern laced deep underneath it.

He gives her a confused look, not understanding what she's asking. "See what?"

Her tone is impatient this time, less pliant and concerned, more rough and angry. "The mark, your name," she says, speaking slowly as though he's a five year old. It stings and he glances quickly over at where Magnus is giving him a worried look before turning back to his sister. He doesn't want to show her, he's never shown anyone but Jace and the man to whom the name on his skin belongs. But, at the same time, she's his sister. Doesn't she deserve to know?

His hands shake as he pulls at the hem of his shirt, angling his body into the couch so the others won't see. Her hands, however, are steady as they trace the looping script just above his hipbone while she glances warily up at the exuberant man across the room. She lets out a breath, lets him drop his shirt back down, and then turns away from him, her expression pained as she curls in on herself.

Alec wishes he could take that hurt of hers away, wishes that knowing he has found his other half, is happy with his other half, while she can never be with hers weren't so hard a thing for her to bear. He would trade his happiness for hers in a heartbeat, even give up Magnus and all the wonders he's brought with him, if it meant she could feel as incredible as he does just at the sound of his soulmate's voice.

"Congrats," she whispers harshly, following a long minute Alec spends staring after his still bickering brother and boyfriend. He almost doesn't catch it, the word so quiet it barely manages to reach his ears, but when he does it makes his breath hitch and his heart clench. He excuses himself quickly and dashes out of the living room, away from all these people he doesn't want to see him cry. Breaking down the second the bathroom door clicks shut behind him, Alec can feel his whole body shake with the force of his sobs, rocking his frame back against the wood where he's curled into a mass of twisting limbs on the floor.

He cries for his sister and the broken way her face had fallen when she'd spoken. He cries for his brother and the dead look in his eyes as he curled an arm around Clary, gaze wandering unconsciously over to Simon. He cries for them, too, for Simon and Clary who've gotten themselves tangled up in all of this with them.

He cries for himself and for Magnus most of all because he doesn't think their happiness can exist for long without that of everyone around them. He knows it won't.

* * *

Alec is nine when he first starts to question the perfection of the soulmate system. He watches his parents as they fight and fall apart and he wonders how they can treat each other the way they do if they're the two halves to make up one whole. He listens as the yelling grow louders, more frequent, the words more vicious in nature, and things begin to smash into walls at offbeat intervals. He feels them tearing each other down, grinding themselves into the angry heaps of suffocating mud the other has left them and laying there drowning with no way to swim. They're not going to get better; Alec may only be nine, but even he knows this.

It isn't until he catches sight of the name on his father's bicep that he begins to question if either had _ever_ really thought it would work, even back when this thing between them had just started. He doesn't say anything to his father, knowing too well his harsh anger and superior strength. Instead, he asks his mother.

"Why is dad with you? You're not his soulmate." His mother chokes, dropping the dishes she was in the middle of washing with a loud clang. She grips the side of the sink until her knuckles turn white and breathes heavily until she remembers how to function. When she finally turns to face her eldest son, there is an odd expression on her face that Alec doesn't recognize.

"It doesn't always work like that," she tells him. "Some people never find their soulmates. Some don't have any to begin with." It makes him think, makes him scourge his memories for any hint of black ink he might have seen peeking out on his mother's pale skin.

"Like you?" he inquires after a moment, turning up blank in his search. The odd expression on his mother's face grows.

"Yeah," she tells him, voice strained. "Like me."

"Is that why you don't love each other?" He doesn't know when to stop, is too young to understand that the look on her face is nowhere near a happy one. He doesn't realize he's gone too far until he sees the tears his mother is trying not to let fall.

"Oh, baby," she implores miserably, sinking to her knees on the cold kitchen floor and gathering him into her arms. She rocks them back and forth like she's the one comforting him, a motion that confuses him as he rests his small hands on her upper back and tries to get her to stop crying. He hadn't meant for that to happen, he'd just been curious. "I'm so sorry."

He doesn't know what she's apologizing for, won't understand her words until he's older and looking back on this moment as the one that made him lose the first bit of faith in the whole soulmates deal. He'll cry then, too, and wish he'd told her it wasn't her fault. It was no one's, really. Sometimes things just didn't turn out like you thought they would.

Alec learned that lesson well.

* * *

During the seventeenth century, Magnus begins to truly question whether he will ever have a soulmate. By now he has been around the world enough to have met all kinds of pairings, though none will be as unique as the three he'll find in London at some point in the next century. He's met people with names on their wrists that didn't match those on their wedding bands, partners where only one of them had the other's name tattooed across their body somewhere, people with only a Downworlder symbol to point them in the right direction. He's even met people with no names at all.

These are the ones that have taken his blind hope and turned it into doubt. He shakes in their presence, his stomach turning with a truth he's terrified might be his own. His hands quiver when he touches them, when he holds them as lovers or comforts them as friends, and his chest seizes its frantic pulsing to send a cold chill coursing through his body. These are the ones that have waited lifetimes for a name to appear, just as he has, and who have died lonely deaths with flawless skin unmarked by the fate they have so desperately craved. These are the ones that make him question the future he has always tried so hard to blindly believe in and used so perilously to keep himself going through all of the death and destruction that touches the world he walks on.

He tries in anguish to ignore it, to tell himself that there is still hope for him, that he is immortal and has much longer to wait than they ever could, but there is a part of him that can't let go of the doubt that now rests heavily over his breaking heart. There's another part of him that knows it's so easy to doubt because he's already scared― scared of having a soulmate and letting them go, scared of having a name and never meeting the person it belongs to, scared of having his soulmate right there with him, of loving them, and of losing them to the one inescapable truth of his existence: his own immortality.

As the doubt begins to eat away at the faith, Magnus begins to eat away at the idea of soulmates. He turns away from the floating thoughts, the wonder and the curiosity and the anticipation and the dread, and stops searching for the names on others' skin. Instead, he lives. He lives and he lives and he doesn't think of how he's dying inside or how the soulmate he might have is not alive as he is and eventually he forgets that he is waiting for a name to appear.

He continues like this until three nephilim from London remind him of the pain this fate can bring and then the trickle of faith and doubt begins to flow back until that night in Barcelona when it all comes rushing through in full force. Until then, though, he is nothing but alive.

* * *

They've been dating for three months when Magnus finally realizes Alec is struggling underneath the happiness they have found. It comes in the form of a sudden attention to the fact that his soulmate is thin, that there are bags under his fading blue eyes, and the opening of a bathroom door to find the dark-haired teen curled on the floor in a mess of sobs. He doesn't know what to do, isn't used to comforting others he's so very close to, cares so much for, and in the end all he can think to try is sinking down to the floor beside him and drawing him into a tight embrace.

He doesn't say anything, doesn't have any idea what words to use to make this go away, so instead he stares out the open bathroom door to the hallway of the institute where a light flickers dubiously in its casing. He realizes, staring at the flicker of a flame that can't quite bring itself to light completely, that maybe Alec is not just struggling under their happiness. Maybe he never had it in the first place and Magnus was the only one content here.

It's hard, realizing that he can't make his soulmate as happy as he is to be with him, but Magnus isn't dumb enough to think Alec doesn't love him. He knows he does; knows that he would be as happy as he would ever be in his life if it weren't for the lack of that in everyone else. Magnus knows that this isn't about him, it's about everybody else who's found their way into Alec's life.

"I don't know what to do," the trembling boy in his arms whispers eventually, curled desperately into Magnus's chest even as his sobs have died and been replaced by a bitter silence pungent with the weight of a knowledge Alec has borne for so long now.

"There's nothing you _can_ do," he whispers back, drawing him closer and kissing the top of his head. He wishes he could make this go away― bring Alec back to the first few weeks of their relationship when he's sure he really was happy ―but he knows all too well the weight others can have in one's heart. And Alec has always tried to bear that load for everyone else in the hopes that they might then be free and alive and content without it there to drag them down.

"There has to be. It can't be like this. This— This can't be how it's supposed to be." His heart is choking in the hard fist that has gripped it and clenched it tightly in its grasp as he feels something wet drip down his cheek, but Magnus only sucks in a heady breath and rubs a comforting circle on his lover's back.

"No," he says softly. "Maybe not, but it's not up to you to fix this. They'll work it out all on their own, love. There's nothing you can do."

Alec's voice is even softer, strangled and weak with the words he doesn't want to admit, "I can't do it, Magnus. I can't do this. I'm so sorry. I can't be happy if they're not."

And Magnus doesn't want to watch him break his heart so he turns away, lets him go, pushes himself to legs that feel unsteady and feet that feel ungrounded. "I know, sweetheart. It's okay. Just know that I'll still be here, I'll always be here. Forever, darling." He leaves, then, and he doesn't look back for fear of falling apart.

* * *

Alec is tired and lost and empty and miserable and alone and there is nothing in the world that has ever been as dangerous as the name scrawled across his hip. He covers it, wraps it in mocking white bandages and swathes it in nostalgic pale coverup. He goes outside and he walks for hours, hunts demons like it's the only meaning to his life, curls into a shaking mess on his bed and stays there for days. He cries and he screams and he fists the covers in sweaty hands as he trembles himself awake from a bad dream, the ink on his hip burning like the day it was branded there. He breaks and he crumbles and there is no one to blame but himself.

His sister turns away from the sight of him, expression pained as she retreats back into her room or out the door to another party that will leave her drunk and stumbling back on legs that barely work. His brother opens his mouth, closes it, reaches for him, turns away, slams the door behind him as he leaves and then comes pounding back through. Clary asks but does not seek an answer when he flinches away from her with hitched breath and an aching heart. Simon sinks onto the couch beside him, puts a movie on, and says nothing even when Alec starts to sob beside him. He thinks that of all of them, he's the easiest to face.

There is an ache in him that won't go away, a pounding and clawing and ripping sensation that sinks darkly into his failing heart. He picks up the phone more than once and hovers bony fingers over the keys that are now faded with so much use, but he never presses the call button no matter how much his body shakes with the need to. It only takes one look at the four people floating through the institute, dreary expressions on their tired faces, to remind him that he can't have the happiness his soulmate brought him. He can't have the peace, the love, the feeling of completion, because no one he cares about can and it would be so unfair for him to cling to it when they can not even grasp its threads.

And then, suddenly, there is a hand in a hand and Alec is watching as his brother drifts away from the girl who has broken his heart with the hugeness of her own, finding his way to the person who's name is inked down his neck. His sister gravitates towards the girl who has been left behind with a sad, knowing smile and a despairing glance down at her ankle where her own soulmate's name is inked. Suddenly, the air is different and new and so much less suffocating and his hands do not shake as he picks up his phone. They're not perfect, he knows that, they're still struggling with what the cruelty of fate has left them, but it's a start and he'll take it. He knows he can't last much longer without the man who's name is on his hip, anyway.

Magnus picks up on the first ring and it has never felt so good to breathe before in all of Alec's life. He thinks they'll be okay, like this, even if his siblings will never fully let go of the pain that they started this mess clinging to. They'll get through it with hands locked together and warm presses of tan skin against pale and gold-green eyes staring into blue. They'll live with the names that have crawled over their skin and into their hearts and one day the pain this whole soulmates thing has brought them will be nothing but a memory of darker times. They'll be alive and together and, really, that's all that matters.

* * *

 **I'd be down to explore some more in this verse, so let me know if you'd like to see anything else. Even if it isn't the Malec parts of it, like say Jace and Simon's relationship or something. Especially if it isn't the Malec parts, actually, because different is fun.**

 **Let me know what you thought in a review. I live off of them *chomp chomp***


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